Roman Gastesi, Monroe County Administrator, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
It’s time to talk budget!
Gastesi said, “We’re going to sit down for a first budget hearing with the county commission and all staff and we’re going to present the proposed budget. I say proposed, because this is the initial budget. We will take comments from the public, and we take comments from the Commission, and direction. Then we go into what I call summer studies. For the next month and a half, two months, and then back in September, we’ll have two more budget hearings and that’s when we adopt a budget.”
It’s a budget that considers economic uncertainty.
Gastesi said, “Because of what’s going on and coming out of COVID, it’s hard to really do a trend analysis on our revenues and our expenditures because everything’s so uncertain. We have increased operational costs, like property and liability insurance, and we have a consumer price index increases on vendor contracts and of course, increase utility fuel and goods and services cost.”
With the volatility of the costs this past year, it can make the budget process even trickier.
Gastesi said, “We look at the prior year’s revenues, prior year’s expenditures, but it’s been so wacky the last few years with COVID and everything. It’s really hard to do this trend analysis. So we’re being very conservative. Hopefully in the next couple of months, we’ll be able to bring some of the cost down like property and liability insurance.
The property insurance has more than doubled.
In addition, the county is looking at a lot of projects, including the Emergency Operations Center and the airport expansion in Key West, as well as the new helicopters for TraumaStar.
Gastesi said, “The current year’s budget is $519 million. The proposed budget for next year is $667 million. So $147 million difference. A lot of that is the capital projects.”
The county is actually pretty sound.
Gastesi explained, “I went to New York last year to borrow some money for the airport to get a bond, and we’re Double A rated. We’ve got a really good rate. Then we borrowed some money for the helicopters also, and because of our rating, we got a 3.2 percent loan, which is very good for today’s loan world. We are getting a lot of grants. About 78% of our projects are funded through grants, outside money, what we like to call other people’s money. The whole EOC, $37 million for the Emergency Operations Center, that’s all other people’s money. No local taxpayer dollars.”
The county asked for $20 million for water quality projects and $5 million for land acquisition, and the state funded both of those.
Gastesi said, “Our state Representative and our state Senators, they are very active up there and they work really hard and they were very helpful in getting that money.”
The Florida Association of Counties gathered recently.
Gastesi said, “We were very well represented. We’re very active. We’re the Little County That Could. We learned a lot to the point where even we are teaching them. They were really in tune of how we did our strategic plan and what we’re doing. So we’re very proud of what Monroe County means to the state and how folks look to us for suggestions. And we learned from them. We all learn from each other. It’s really important.”
Monroe County also sent people up north to help with hurricane clean up.
Gastesi said, “We’re really proud of that. Due to Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Ian, we sent staff. I went myself personally, I went up there. It’s important to go up there, especially after a few days when our colleagues who’ve been battered and gone through what we went through with Irma and it’s nice to get some help and even nicer to give it back when it’s their turn.”
The waste removal contract has been up for discussion recently.
Gastesi explained, “We call these pre-event contracts, so it’s before the event and we want to have these contracts in play. It’s important because all the costs are associated, everything’s a contract in play. So when we have an event, then the contractors can mobilize and actually they start mobilizing days before. I was just talking to one of the contractors yesterday. You want to have things positioned throughout the county, in case a bridge goes down or anything so you can move things around. We’re very, very fortunate that the two of the bigger contractors are interested in staying here in the Keys. We’re very fortunate that we can have these two contractors working together and when the time comes, we’ll decide if they both are going to work or one’s going to work with what’s going on. So we’re in a really good place, and then hopefully, the county commission will move forward with this contract tomorrow.”
Tomorrow will be a full county commission meeting with about 100 items on the agenda.
Gastesi said, “Staff is just so busy and there’s so much going on.”
Residents are welcome to participate in the meeting either in-person, online or watching on the television channel. It will begin at 9 a.m. tomorrow.
For the agenda, click here: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/monroecounty-fl/a746b468778ebb915d6f14d113a0ca830.pdf